Facebook Ads vs Boosted Posts: Which Is Better For You?

If you’re unfamiliar with the fine details of social media marketing, it can be tough to understand the difference between Facebook ads and boosted posts, the two primary forms of advertising on the platform.

Understanding the differences between boosted posts and ads created through an ad account is crucial, as a well-structured ad account offers greater control, precision, and long-term effectiveness in advertising campaigns.

Both are effective ways to reach potential customers, but which should you choose? Let’s break down both!

Understanding Facebook Page Options

When it comes to promoting your brand on Facebook, you have a couple of key options: boosted posts and Facebook ads. Each serves a unique purpose and can be leveraged to meet different marketing goals. Understanding these options is crucial for making the most of your Facebook page and ensuring your advertising dollars are well spent.

What is a Boosted Post?

A boosted post is a feature on Facebook that allows you to promote your existing posts to a wider audience. By allocating advertising dollars to a post, you can significantly increase its reach and engagement. Boosted posts are often used to give popular posts a small leg up, ensuring they get seen by more people. They are a simple and effective way to increase the visibility of a post and can be created with just a few clicks. This makes boosting posts an attractive option for those looking to quickly and easily enhance their Facebook presence.

What is a Facebook Ad?

A Facebook ad, on the other hand, is a more advanced way to promote content on the platform. Facebook ads offer greater control and precision in targeting and budgeting. Created using Ads Manager, these ads allow you to manage multiple ad campaigns simultaneously. Facebook ads are ideal for users who want to achieve specific results beyond just reach and impressions. Whether your goal is lead generation, driving website visitors, or developing brand awareness, Facebook ads provide the tools and flexibility needed to meet your objectives.

Key Differences Between Boosted Posts and Facebook Ads

While both boosted posts and Facebook ads can help you reach a larger audience, they serve different purposes and offer varying levels of control and customization. Boosted posts are great for increasing engagement on your existing posts with minimal effort. They are easy to set up and can quickly enhance the visibility of your content. However, they offer limited targeting options and are primarily designed to engage your current audience.

Facebook ads, on the other hand, provide a more robust set of tools for targeting and customization. They allow you to reach new audiences and achieve specific marketing goals, such as lead generation and driving website traffic. With Facebook ads, you can create highly targeted campaigns that are tailored to your ideal audience, making them a powerful tool for expanding your brand’s reach and impact.

In summary, the choice between Facebook ads and boosted posts depends on your specific marketing objectives. If you’re looking to quickly boost the visibility of an existing post, a boosted post is a great option. However, if you need more control and precision in your advertising efforts, Facebook ads are the way to go.

Can increase engagement on your page. If you want to see more likes, shares, and comments, then boosted posts are worth considering, because most of your audience will be preexisting customers. Boost posts are simple and accessible, especially for beginners, making them an excellent starting point for those new to social media advertising.

Why is this important? You’re ensuring that current customers can still have opportunities to engage with your brand, which makes them less likely to leave for a competitor and increases trust.

Customization is an option… to an extent. You have the option to optimize for the impact you want, such as likes, comments, shares, or just overall awareness. You can also adjust your budget, length of boosting period, and who you want the post to reach, along with where it should be placed (desktop News Feed, Instagram, Facebook mobile, etc )

Primarily designed to increase audience engagement, not sales. Many of the people who will see your boosted post are already in your audience network, which lessens the likelihood of new eyes on your business. However, a Facebook post can be promoted to reach a wider audience by boosting it, which enhances its visibility.

Limited customization and no call-to-action. There’s no option to create custom audiences, an audience you can create from an email list website visitor list, recent users, or other data. You can’t set your own bid amount, nor can you designate delivery frequency options (how many times your post will show up on a user’s screen)

Can only be used to promote existing brands. Are you a new brand on Facebook? That means you cannot do a boosted post as a starting point promotion.

No differentiation in appearance from regular posts. Since a boosted post just looks like a status update, it can be easy to overlook on a person’s timeline. That means a boosted post has no correlation to growing sales, brand awareness, or other goals.

Advantages of Facebook Ads Manager

Better targeting. Options include interests, demographics, location, age, gender, relationship status, education level, occupation, income, hobbies, and many other factors. And since these audience types aren’t selected randomly, you’ll be able to reach them with relevant content.

Using the Facebook news feed for your ads can offer better engagement and reach for your promotional campaigns.

Richer customization options. Some of Facebook’s ad formats are built with specific campaign goals in mind, with options for ads that collect leads, direct users to your website, and promote products. Ads can also include call-to-action buttons, making them a more dynamic choice for social media marketing professionals.

Stronger at reaching brand new audiences (and customers!) Facebook ads are ideal for getting in front of new, larger audiences who don’t know who you are or have no connection through the platform. Here’s where a well-done Facebook ad can really make an impact!

More significant, and often immediate, impact. Facebook ads tend to have a direct impact and translate directly to campaign goals, like lead captures, app installations, and sales. With certain campaigns, the added functionality of Facebook ads might make them a better fit.

Disadvantages of Facebook Ads

Can be complicated to create. They also require more in-depth knowledge of your ideal audience to be cost-effective. Speaking of which…

Using the same post for both boosting and ads can present challenges, as the differences in targeting options and management capabilities require a hands-on approach to test both strategies with identical targeting and budget settings.

Can be expensive. If you want to reach multiple audiences, a Facebook advertising budget can quickly rise. That’s why it’s crucial to set a marketing budget, along with a daily budget for ads, and stick to it!

Already a highly competitive market. It can be a challenge to stand out when so many companies are already running ads on Facebook. That’s why it’s so crucial to have a strategy in place of what you’re advertising, the audience you want, and the right placement to inspire a clickthrough.

Who do you want to reach?

This prompts you to choose a target audience who may enjoy your content. What is your budget?

Pick a max budget that you’d like to invest in the life of your campaign.

How long do you want to run your boost?

In summary, Facebook ads vs boosted posts? The choice you make largely depends on your campaign objectives and advertising goals, as each format tends to encourage different outcomes. It’s crucial to understand the differences between boosted posts and ads created through an ad account, as a well-structured ad account offers greater control, precision, and long-term effectiveness in advertising campaigns.